I’ve been spending the last several days churning out articles to bring to light important aspects of the current labour dispute between Community Living Renfrew County South and their employees belonging to Local 472 of OPSEU.
As I dig into the issues and the roadblocks, a name keeps popping up as being sort of a common denominator for everything that’s going wrong with these negotiations, which aren’t really negotiations at all, but rather a naked shakedown of employee rights.
That name belongs to CLRCS Executive Director Jennifer Lavallee.
I’ve pretty much painted Lavallee as a lackey of the Ontario government, her strings being pulled by somebody up the political food chain, although they’ll swear up and down that there’s no government involvement in this dispute.
But what if I’m wrong? What if I’m horribly wrong? What if I’ve been beating up on a defenceless administrator, an apparatchik, somebody who perhaps found themselves as a victim themselves of really bad fate, circumstances, timing, and luck?
So, for the sake of argument, let’s just say that I’ve been wrong all along.
Let’s just say that the wage aspect of this dispute is not in her hands and never was. Let’s say further that the broader wage issue is something being negotiated at a provincial level, leaving the locals on both sides out of the discussion.
Community Living is an arm’s length government-funded agency that runs itself with the dollars the province supplies, inadequately-so for the record. It’s run and administered by a Board of Directors, who hire an Executive Director to serve as the top administrator. In this case, that’s Jennifer Lavallee..
Let’s presume that each individual agency across the province has a mandate to negotiate on a local level with the local union representatives, in this case OPSEU 472. If money and wages are being dealt with by the big boys and girls, I guess that leaves pretty much everything else on the table subject to discussion, that is if there were actually two parties willing to discuss anything. OPSEU is at the table waiting. CLRCS is not. That, presumably, is Jennifer’s call, making her directly susceptible to legitimate criticism of bargaining in bad faith, which she is, and by extension, the Board of Directors as well.
It appears that Lavallee has a strategy, no doubt supported by so-called labour experts, perhaps including labour lawyers. Except that high-end strategy of hers is odious to anyone looking on at what’s happening here. If she’s taking advice from lawyers, then they must surely be from that venerable law firm Bowie, Cheetham, and Howe. And I’m pretty certain that you and I, as Ontario taxpayers, are paying for this external support.
Bowie, Cheetham, and Howe. Say that a few times. You’ll get the point.
So if wages aren’t part of her purview, then I guess the other stuff must be, stuff like seniority, working conditions, workplace conditions, opportunities for advancement. I suppose it’s being left up to each government agency to chart their own negotiated course through these troubled waters, meaning that no two agreements across the province will be necessarily the same. That’s the clear advantage in having agencies like these stand-apart from the government proper.
It allows the government, through the agency directorships and executive directors, to play a terrible game of divide and conquer. If the government can pick off a union local or two here and there along the way, then job well done, right?
As to the wages, let’s be clear here. These striking workers are entitled through a Supreme Court of Canada ruling to a 6.5% retroactive payment for having their bargaining rights unconstitutionally trampled upon by Doug Ford, something that has cost Ontario taxpayers a fortune. That’s simply what they’re owed, and honestly shouldn’t even be part of the discussion. What should be discussed is an actual raise, perhaps somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2.5%, over and above the owed 6.5%. The additional 2.5% — my idea — would represent the average wage increase in Ontario public sector unions over the past two years, with some unions even securing agreements with wage increases of 9.5%, a figure that included the owed 6.5%.
That kind of thing is way above Jennifer’s pay grade and beyond the length of her leash. Despite being on the Sunshine List, it doesn’t mean the sun shines on her every day. Also, if the wage issue is being handled at the OPSEU provincial level, then who the hell are they negotiating with? In the end, when you scrape away all the cut-outs and disguises, you can be damned-sure it’s the government behind that curtain, although according to them, they’re not involved.
Okay, so with wages out of the picture, that means Jennifer, and by extension her Board of Directors, are calling the shots on the other issues, and it appears they’d prefer to play hardball, not even willing to talk about any of these things. This is not good-faith bargaining, it is an intentional sabotage of the collective bargaining process.
Her bargaining strategy is to simply toss grenades at these people, ignore them, then lob some mortar rounds in there until they finally come back on their knees to get their jobs back. She knows they’re (the workers) going to get paid one way or the other. But she’s hoping that they’ll be so freaking delighted to get that 6.5% after many weeks on the picket line, that they’ll happily cave on all their other issues, things that have been hard-fought-for over the years. All this in the face of the agency’s own mission statement, where they talk about treating people with respect. I suppose, at the end of the day, such noble sentiments expressed in a mission statement serve as window dressing. Perhaps more in the way of an aspirational suggestion.
Something that looks good on a website but falls apart at street level.
She’s probably betting that after so long on the picket line, workers will begin to turn on each other, younger ones perhaps not invested in the concept of seniority than more senior employees. The turnover in this profession is relatively high, so maybe Jennifer hopes those less senior employees would be willing to sell out their older counterparts as a concession for something else.
That appears to be the plan. I suppose in the perfect world of the Executive Director, this all ends with her saying “Take your goddamn 6.5% and get the hell out of my office!”
In other words, you got your stupid raise, what more could you possibly want?
The collective bargaining process is flawed but it’s pretty much the best we can attain right now. But it is subject to manipulation by one or both parties, and I feel the manipulation of that process is sitting squarely at the feet of management in this case. It’s a cynical process at times, made more so by the involvement of lawyers and strategic intelligence companies and operatives willing to find ways to exact an advantage over the other party.
If wages are not in her hands, then it follows that the stripping of seniority rights are, in fact, part of her responsibility. Meaning that this is her idea, or the board’s idea, aided by the sage advice of these labour experts who are getting paid by somebody. Probably somebody not involved.
That means that the most reprehensible transgressions being directed towards these local workers are being thought of and advanced by people who work within the same place, for the same people. They are local people. People you see at Metro, maybe the rink, in line at Tim’s, at the soccer pitch. No doubt solid citizens in every aspect.
Except this one.
I have to say this makes things look even worse for our local Executive Director, not better. It appears that most of the mean-spirited approach towards the members of Local 472 is coming from her office.
As in that famous horror movie line, the calls are coming from inside the house.
And more and more, the Board of Directors is starting to come across in a less than favourable light, subject to their level of involvement and/or influence. If they’re a party to this ham-handed approach to collective bargaining, then accountability should flow in their direction as well.
We all see the names.
Are they all okay with this?
NEWSMAGRENFREW 